These are random thoughts of an autobiographical/spiritual/philosophical/psychological/literary nature, reflections on life as I experience and try to make some little sense of it!

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The Liberating Word

The Liberating WordFrom the moment we are born we are enmeshed in a world of words. To make sense of our environment, we need to name things. By naming them, objects become familiar to the growing child and he or she begins to feel at home in the world. Even as adults we are afraid of the unknown. We desire to name it so that we can have some control over it.Fears cease to be real threats when they are faced squarely. Only when we have named the fear, psychologists tell us, do we start to tame it and exercise some control over it. Instead of fear controlling us, we now begin to control it. Once being named, it will gradually recede into the background.In times of illness where we don't know what is wrong with us, it is indeed a great relief to have the medical specialist name the particular ailment. When the unknown has been given a name it now becomes less threatening. Once diagnosed, the illness becomes manageable and medicine can be prescribed. Likewise when the alcoholic names his or her illness and makes the statement, ' I am an alcoholic', both to self and to others, then and only then can the disease be addressed and controlled.Considerable emphasis today is put on communications. Many colleges offer courses in this area at ever more elaborate levels than before. We are a people sailing upon a sea of mass communications. Yet communication in itself is as old as creation. We all desire to reach out and communicate with others. Words liberate us from the hell of loneliness and despair. We have a deep inner desire to share our joys and sorrows with other human beings. We can certainly share at the level of gesture, but the spoken or written word cannot be bettered. One of the greatest ironies in today's society is surely the blocking and stifling of real communication between human beings by the very objects and media of mass communications.Writing, as indeed any art, is a good way of getting to know oneself. It has only more recently been recognised by psychologists as a great means of therapy, while it has always been seen as such, even though unconsciously, by writers themselves. Journalling is a technique widely recommended today, that is that we write how we feel in order to get to know ourselves.In and through writing the will to meaning is embraced and expressed. This phrase, “the will to meaning”, was coined by Victor Frankl to describe the most basic need in every human being. He found through his experience in a German concentration camp that only those who could see some meaning in their lives had some chance of survival. He went on to found his own school of psychiatry based on this premise.When writers use words they stamp order upon chaos. They dream a dream of order in a world of apparent disorder. They share this dream of order with their readers. In doing so they are giving meaning to the mystery of life. They are sharing their dream of order and meaning with their readers. Both writer and reader are the richer because of this creative urge to commit thoughts to paper.If we continue this metaphor, we may properly call the Bible God's dream of order for creation and for humankind as pinnacle of that creation. God's dream of order, as expressed in the Bible, is the story of our creation and redemption, both strands being finely interwoven as the story of our salvation. Jesus himself is described by the evangelist, John, as the 'Word of God made flesh'. This Jesus was a lover of words, a maker of sentences, a teller of stories and a creator of parables. For the Hebrews, the spoken word was something very precious and personal, inseparable from and yet revealing the person who spoke it. In the Old Testament, God revealed himself through the words of the prophets. The New Testament tells us that the Son is the perfect expression of God the Father and all that God is from eternity. In other words, Jesus is, as the Father's perfect expression of himself, 'the Word'. He spoke both words of consolation and exhortation to his disciples. Truly for the Christian or believer this Jesus is the liberating Word of God.The above article is a recovered document from an old floppy disc - written some eight years ago. I have not edited it and, therefore, have left in all the overtly Christian references. At the time I would have sincerely believed in their fundamental truth.

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Perhaps you have hit on this blog by sheer chance, or perhaps by serendipidy. Whether you end up reading its content or not is inconsequential. This blog is in no way evangelical in any sense of that term. It wishes to make its readers think and reflect. Before you move on to a more exciting site reflect for a few moments on this quotation: "Some men see things as they are and say "why?" but I dream things that never were and say "why not?". This quotation is variously attributed to Robert Kennedy and even Teddy Kennedy, but it is from a work by George Bernard Shaw, one of Ireland's four great Nobel laureates for Literature.